Gaming - Page 1964

NVIDIA Editor's Day 2014 - Ubisoft is a very close partner of NVIDIA, with the hardware giant helping the software giant in most of its games, including the soon-to-be-released Far Cry 4. In Monterey Bay last week, we were greeted with an early peek at the GeForce GTX 980, as well as a slew of games, one of which was Far Cry 4.

We found out that Far Cry 4 will be utilizing a bunch of NVIDIA technologies, with an injection of features that will ensure that the PC version of Far Cry 4 will stand far and away from the console versions, current-generation consoles included. We have HBAO+, PCSS, TXAA, God Rays, Fur, and Enhanced 4K Support, as well as NVIDIA's just-announced MFAA, DSR and much more.

Starting with HBAO+ or horizon-based ambient occlusion, a technology that improves on ambient occlusion, which provides a much more realistic shadow around objects that occlude rays of light.

NVIDIA Editor's Day 2014 - NVIDIA has now officially launched its new Maxwell-based GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970 GPUs, but at its Editor's Day event last week in the beautiful Monterey Bay, California, the company reiterated its stance on PC gaming.

The company has said that out of the 330 million or so PC gamers in the world, around 200 million of those game on GeForce GPUs, which is a huge number of gamers on NVIDIA hardware. One of the driving forces behind this, is that PC gaming is now considered a sport, thanks to eSports titles like League of Legends, StarCraft and many more.

The amount of eSports tournaments has grown considerably from 2000, where only 10 tournaments took place, to 279 in 2008. Between 2008 and 2012, that number has grown exponentially, to 1151 eSports tournaments last year. Professional eSports gamers are making some serious cash, and there are more people than ever tuning into live streams, with 40,000+ in live attendance at some of these events.

We all know Halo is for the most part, an Xbox exclusive, but Microsoft is pledging better PC support, where is does the first-person shooter stand on the PC? Executive Producter on the game, Dan Ayoub, explains: "We've definitely heard the questions about PC. Right now we're a couple months out from the Xbox version's release, and that's our main focus right now. That's quite honestly where all our headspace is right now".

Considering that Halo: Master Chief Collection is close to release, one would've thought there is no better time than now than to release it onto the PC. But, with four games with one of them receiving a complete graphical overhaul, it might have been too much for the company: releasing an Xbox One version, and a PC version.

Ayoub added: "From a technical standpoint, you look at the architecture of the Xbox One and there are some similarities to the architecture of a modern PC. That certainly makes that sort of cross-platform development easier. But beyond that the ease goes away. Master Chief Collection is massive. We have to coordinate four games, 100-plus maps, a lot of new cinematics, and Halo 2 Anniversary". Microsoft seems to be all-in with Halo on Xbox, with Ayoub saying: "We wanted to do a great job on console. The anchor of Halo: Master Chief Collection is the ten-year anniversary of Halo 2 on console. So our approach was to focus primarily on console as a result of that".

The researchers of Villanova University and Rutgers University have published a study where there have made a comparison using the sales of violent video games with criminal statistics across the United States. Interestingly, it was discovered that contrary to a certain belief, the number of criminal activities seems to drop at the time when AAA titles like Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty are released.

The co-author of this study Patrick Markey said, "Various measurements of video game use are related to decreases in violent crime such as homicide." Markey has been studying about this issue for a while, and according to him such games earn a bad reputation among some people, the belief is that violence is something that young men enjoy. But he also pointed out that doesn't mean that violent games encourage people to be violent in the real-world.

He added, "We always have to be careful with correlational data. Correlation doesn't mean causation. But we haven't just looked at sales of games and violent crimes. We have taken into account trends in the data. We remove stuff that typically happens, like a spike in murders during summer and high sales of games near the Holidays, and it's still negative. To me what is most amazing is that is never positive. It is always statistically negative."

Microsoft has confirmed it will pay $2.5 billion to purchase Mojang, the company responsible for Minecraft. Minecraft has sold more than 54 million copies across the world, and the three founding executives of Mojang will reportedly leave the company. The game is the top paid app for both the Google Android and Apple iOS, and with only 4 employees, brought in $287 in revenues during 2013

"At Microsoft, we believe in the power of content to unite people," the company said in a press statement. "Minecraft adds diversity to our game portfolio and helps us reach new gamers across multiple platforms. Gaming is the top activity across devices and we see great potential to continue to grow the Minecraft community and nurture the franchise."

News of the acquisition sent shockwaves through the Minecraft community, with many gamers worried about which direction Microsoft would take. Meanwhile, Microsoft hopes to draw gamers mobile platform instead of focusing on the Xbox One or PC.

Destiny shook up the gaming industry after launching earlier this week, topping $500 million in sales to retailers during launch day. The game title was made by Bungie and published by Activision, with hype surrounding the game building over the past few months. Sales to retailers doesn't provide an exact tally of game sales to consumers, but indicates retailers expect it to continue to be a sought after game title.

"Since the beginning, we've been confident that our investment and belief in Destiny would pay off," said Eric Hirshberg, head of Activision game publishing. "But not many people believed we'd be able to say it did so on day one. We have more confidence than ever that Destiny will become one of the iconic franchises of this generation, and Activision's next billion dollar brand."

Video game blockbusters are big money, with gamers often preferring to continue playing storylines as they develop over multiple titles. Some analysts predict Destiny could sell 10 million units to consumers before the end of the year, indicating it could become a major influence to help push console sales.

The Microsoft Xbox One and Nintendo Wii U game platforms saw sales bumps in August, but still couldn't compete against the Sony PlayStation 4 in the United States, analysts recently noted. The Xbox One saw a 14 percent month-over-month boost to account for 150,000 units sold, while the Wii U saw tremendous growth of 11 percent year-over-year up to 65,000. Although the PS4 had a 14 percent month-over-month drop, the console still racked up 175,000 units sold in the same timeframe.

"We expect PS4's [August] sales to again exceed those of the Xbox One," said Michael Pachter, Wedbush Morgan analyst. "[PS4 still outside Xbox One] despite the June introduction of a $400 Xbox One without Kinect and the August release of a $400 Madden NFL 15 bundle that includes a download code [for Madden], essentially bundling the game for free."

Although the Wii U and Xbox One both saw boosted sales figures in August, it must be troubling that neither platform can still compete on the sales chart against the PS4. Since the PS4 and Xbox One were released in November 2013, it has been domination by Sony's console - and despite a price cut and more console/game bundles, this will continue to be a slugfest.

Warner Bros. and DC have announced the release date for Batman: Arkham Knight, with June 2, 2015 to see two special editions released. The first is the Limited Edition, but the second sounds a bit nicer: Batmobile Edition. Both of the special editions will be made in limited quantities across the US, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

The Limited Edition provides an art book, SteelBook case and game disc, the Arkham Knight #0 comic, and exclusive skin pack with three The New 52 skins, and a Batman memorial statue. The Limited Edition will set back gamers $144 for the PS4 and Xbox One version, but on the PC, and limited to the European, Australian and New Zealand gamers, it will be priced at $120.

For $200, the Batmobile Edition is limited to consoles, and comes with everything that the Limited Edition version offered, but removes the memorial statue and replaces it with a transforming Batmobile statue.

Amazon recently purchased videogame streaming service Twitch for $1 billion, and ESPN President John Skipper doesn't have any current interest in promoting "eSports" in the near future. Although ESPN is still known for mainstream sports, the broadcaster has shown everything from bowling and darts to bass fishing and poker.

"It's not a sport - it's a competition," Skipper recently said. "Chess is as competition. Checkers is a competition. Mostly, I'm interested in doing real sports."

There is money that could be generated from streaming eSports, with 2.4 billion hours of eSports footage watched online in 2013, according to an HIS Technology report. The growing market could have an estimated $300 million value by 2018. Ironically, ESPN and Valve partnered to stream the Dota 2 world championship tournament on ESPN 3, the online and Web-based branch.

The Sims 4 has now been launched, and as you can imagine, there are pirated copies being downloaded. The pirated versions of The Sims 4 has seen EA use some anti-piracy measures, where the pirated version of The Sims 4 seeing a massive injection of pixels, making it look like a retro mess.

The pixels kick in when a Sim steps into the shower, or gets naked for whatever reason. But the pirated versions of the game will see pixels continue to expand and blur, where it will eventually cover the entire screen. The results? What you see in the screenshot above. EA has had many customers already complain on The Sims 4's official forums about their "broken" copy of the game, but EA has said that they have no plans to help these customers enjoy their pirated version of the game, and to just purchase the legit copy if they don't like their pixelated experience.